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Sadistic school teacher posts photos of cruel and unusual punishment

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The child in the photo is probably no more than five years old. His face is visibly contorted in a shriek of pain as his teacher gleefully lifts him off the ground by his ears. The image, which was posted online October 24, has already created a frenzy both on the Internet and in the real world.

The teacher, who has been identified as Yan Yanhong, had a colleague snap the picture at the nursery school where they both worked in Wenling, a city in China’s eastern Zhejiang province. Yan, who posted the image online herself, said she had done it “just for fun”.

The day after the photo surfaced, Yan was dismissed from her job and arrested by the local authorities. The school was given a slap on the wrist and told it needed to review its practices. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that Yan was not actually qualified for her position, and had been hired amid a teacher shortage in the province.

The photo was far from the first time Yan had documented herself abusing her students. The young teacher kept a blog, which has since been hacked, where she posted photo after photo of her sadistic behaviour. In one picture, a small boy is seen with his mouth taped shut (“It was well deserved”, Yan noted), while another shows a child head-down in a rubbish bin. Yet another image shows a young girl and boy in a lip-lock.